Fourteen

“Catching the Boat”

In which we embark on a sea chase – board the Maoaoa – take charge of what is rightfully ours – sustain minor damage – but return safely home with our precious cargo.

“Two days we’ve been waiting for this feed – two days!” I grumbled as we sat on the edge of the wharf at Munda.

Just before lunch on the day after our meeting with Mr Wu, I had after a hard, hot morning’s hunt at last tracked down some of the sacks of evil-smelling brown pellets that chickens apparently found so appetising. Hurrying to the shipping office at the docks, before allowing myself the luxury of a flight home, I attempted to arrange their delivery. Ponderously, the clerk had consulted his timetables.

“The ship will leave on Saturday.”

“Great, so when does it arrive in Munda?” I asked, holding the door half-open.

He had consulted a number of different pieces of paper on the table in front of him and then, confused, some more in a pile on the floor.

“Monday,” he finally pronounced after a great deal of mysterious scribbling and crossing out on a notepad. Then, after a short pause, he added, “or…maybe Thursday.”

Solomon Time.

Waiting was a pastime that I prided myself on having adapted to well since my arrival. Never a devotee of deadlines, I agreed that if something happened a little behind schedule, it was unlikely to have any significant effect. The world would continue to turn on its axis, if indeed that is what it does.

(Small Tome and I had discussed this at some length.

“How do you know it does?” he had asked.

“Well it does; everybody knows that.”

“Well, I don’t!” he said, triumphantly proving his point.

I blushed deeply.)

In any case, no action that I took seemed to have the slightest effect on anything, so, generally speaking, I was happy to relax and indulge in the pointless pleasure of hope.

Only a few weeks before, on a Thursday, we had paddled to a football competition up in the Vonavona Lagoon, just along from Vella Lavella. I had been appointed manager and team coach, although if my successes, or lack of them, with the Glorious Fourth XV were anything to go by, I was not terribly well qualified for the job. Kick-off for the first match was to have taken place at eleven that morning. Nobody was quite on time but by four in the afternoon all the teams had arrived apart from one.

The Hutuna team only appeared the following morning as a wantok had borrowed the village canoe to go fishing. Striking a rich run of tuna, he had made a unilateral decision to return it a bit later than agreed. The team, when eventually they beached their boat at the nearest spot as the Kurru Kurru flew, had sprinted through a few surprised gardens and on up the road, changing into their kit as they came. This only resulted in individual injury and collective exhaustion. They need not have worried as the organisers and referees had only just finished marshalling another competition that lunchtime. By the time they had installed themselves in the officials’ hut on the side of the pitch and set up their public address system, there was just time to announce that the competition would be delayed until the following morning. Unfortunately Saturday was the day of rest for the Seventh Day Adventist teams and Sunday the Sabbath for everybody else. Accordingly, it was agreed to postpone proceedings until Monday at noon. Eventually, due to some further delays as a result of a couple of lost whistles and running repairs that had to be made to the ball with a bicycle puncture kit in between games, the final was played in the dusk of the following Wednesday. Thankfully we had been knocked out in the second round.

Some teams and spectators had, however, been camped at the pitch for a whole week but all this without a word of complaint, without a murmur of annoyance. After all, what difference did it make which day anything took place? The weather was constantly warm, food and water were plentiful and, surrounded by family and friends, it was simply a matter of lying back in the shade of the trees and savouring the delicious anticipation of watching the Beautiful Game.

This aptitude for treading water as Time ebbed and flowed around them meant that the islanders found my fretful impatience, which occasionally I found impossible to subdue, extremely difficult to understand.

On the other hand, we had now been waiting for just over forty-eight hours for the Maoaoa – the bloody cargo ship – to hove into view. Another morning had just risen over the post office and I had already stayed two nights with my wantoks, Geoff and Marlene, whilst Small Tome, Hapi and Luki – two of Fatty’s teenage sons – had stayed with some of theirs in nearby Kokenggolo.

“I am going to radio the ship and see if I can find out where they are,” I announced, standing up. If it was still a long way off then we could at least all go back to the village and come back later. I turned on my heel and set off up the road.

“No worries, Will. He will come soon. Maybe we just wait here and keep lookout.”

Small Tome gestured towards Kundu Kundu, a pair of islands which marked the passage at the edge of the reef that the ship would have to follow. A light onshore breeze fluttered the downy hibiscus and disturbed the drowsing flowers on the bougainvillaea that shaded him as he sat with Hapi and Luki and fed pebbles to the myriad fish that swam to and fro at their feet.

Oh well, perhaps there wasn’t any real rush, perhaps it was just easier to wait. Small Tome was right. The ship would come in its own sweet time and there was nothing at all I could do to hurry it up. I stretched out on the sand by the jetty and stared up at a coconut palm, which was, according to Stephenson, ‘that giraffe of vegetables, so ungainly, to the English eye so foreign’. He had clearly never been to Torquay.

In the upper leaves a pair of parakeets were engaged in a domestic stand-off. Whether they were on non-squawking terms because of some deep-seated dissatisfaction with their relationship or whether it was a temporary tiff it was impossible to tell. Now, however, they were perched on separate branches and looking steadfastly in opposite directions. Despite this distraction, after about five minutes I began to fidget. I stood up again.

“Right, I am definitely going to radio.”

Small Tome looked up and smiled sympathetically. He wasn’t sure that there was really much point but if that was what I wanted to do then he was not going to be the person to stand in my way.

“No wari, Will. You go radio.”

“Right, off I go.”

The municipal radio was kept at the provincial office, which was tucked just behind the bank. Walking up the white steps, along the veranda and through the door marked ‘Reception’, I found myself in front of an immense woman, who was sitting behind an enormous typewriter hammering away at the keys with an alarming ferocity. With a final ‘ping!’ and a mighty swipe that sent the carriage whizzing back over to the left like a train hitting a brick wall, she looked up.

“Morning!” she shrilled.

“Yes, hello, morning, I wondered if I could use the radio. I am trying to contact the Maoaoa.” The name of the ship was almost impossible to pronounce. Every time I tried I gave the impression of having rather ill-fitting dentures.

The woman stood up and came busily from behind her desk in her bright yellow and orange patterned dress. Pushing past me as I breathed in and shrank against the wall, she opened a wooden cupboard. Inside the door hung a small mirror and, alongside a stub of wilting lipstick and a garden rake of a comb, there stood, self-admiringly, a smart, new radio. She switched it on, adjusted a knob causing a couple of torture chamber squeals and twisted the central dial a couple of notches. All of a sudden we found ourselves in the middle of a maritime stag party. Voices shouting and laughing, intermingled with snatches of rowdy singing and music, crackled across the airwaves. Grabbing the handset, one hand on her hip, she barked some harsh instructions in Pijin.

As if by magic, silence suddenly fell over the South Pacific. The woman recovered her composure, patted her hair in the mirror and called for the ship in the sweetest of tones.

“Maoaoa, Maoaoa, Maoaoa, here Provincial Office. Come in plis.”

Silence.

I practised mouthing her pronunciation of the ship’s name behind her back until, swinging from one haunch to the other, she caught sight of me in the mirror and frowned. I hastily rearranged my lips info a neutral smile.

“Maoaoa, Maoaoa, Maoaoa, come in.”

Silence.

Frustrated by the lack of response, she lost her temper and bellowed a stream of invective across the airwaves. I shuddered as she announced, with a grabbing and wrenching hand action, what she proposed to do to the unfortunate skipper should he fail to respond.

Terrified silence.

She threw the handset back into the cupboard and slammed it closed.

“Nobody on ship.”

I dodged as she strode back to her desk and, without a word, carried on with her pounding. Muttering garbled thanks, I fled.

Back at the wharf, Small Tome and the two boys had nodded off. Fine lookouts, I thought grumpily as I settled down under the tree to keep watch for the Marie Celeste. The radioing episode had, it seemed, been more emotionally draining than I had realised because after a short while my eyelids began to droop. A few minutes later, despite manful efforts to avoid it, I fell fast asleep.

Some time later I opened my eyes, woken by the birds above me who seemed to have reached some sort of compromise and were now chattering with nervous incessancy. Out in the bay I recognised vaguely the green, wooden cargo boat – the Mowwow – the Mowerwower, or however it was pronounced, that I had seen loading on the wharf in Honiara. It looked fantastic against the blue of the sea. Rolling onto my side, I slipped back into the arms of Lethe, at least I think that was what she had said her name was.

“Tome, Luki, Hapi! Look it’s here, wake up. The ship. It’s arriving,” I said, suddenly coming giddily round with that terrible, disorientating, encompassing sickness that comes with the realisation that you should not have been asleep at all. I used to suffer from it a lot driving my car and in examination halls.

“Huh?” The trio sat up in perfect unison.

By now, I was on the end of the jetty. They jumped up too and the four of us watched it chug through the calm waters. Our own boat, in which we had laid a plastic tarpaulin to protect the sacks from leaks, was ready.

Something, though, was not quite right. To reach the jetty and avoid the shallow reef the ship needed to turn in quickly after it had come between Kundu and the other Kundu, tucking itself inside the white stick that had been planted in the reef as a marker of the channel. Yet it seemed to be ploughing straight on to the next point and on round the island. We waited uncertainly, willing for it to come towards us. It did not and it was not going to.

We tumbled into the canoe. Such was my haste that I slipped on the plastic sheet and found myself flat out in the bottom of the canoe as Luki feverishly tried to start the engine. Such was his enthusiasm and enviable strength that the starting rope snapped and he too found himself lying on his back. Squirming free, I looked up. The Maoaoa was disappearing into the distance.

“Come on, Small Tome.” The normally irrepressible Tome was looking rather bleary. “Let’s see if we can get this engine going.”

Annoyingly, the piece of rope that Luki was still holding was just too short to be of any use. Small Tome staggered off into the bushes to return, after a short while, with a piece of bush liana.

“Do you think it’ll work?” I asked. It looked too spindly to be of much use.

“No wariwari,” said Small Tome, yawning as he removed the cover from the engine and wrapped the vine round the groove on the top of the motor. The ship had all but disappeared round the corner. He put a couple of twists round his hand and pulled. The vine snapped but not before the engine coughed and fired. He pushed the gear lever into reverse and we slipped away from the jetty: Swinging the long canoe round, we set off in pursuit of the Maoaoa. The coastal trader, although travelling much more slowly than we were, was now a hazy mark, a possible mirage, far off along the coast.

As we negotiated the marker stick, the wind picked up and soon waves were breaking against the hull of our boat, bursting into spray. Within minutes we were all soaked, but we were slowly gaining on the ship. I could now make out the colour of its hull again and see the black blotch of dirty diesel that rose from the rusted funnel. We could see figures leaning against the rail as they stood high up on the flat deck.

Then, of course, our engine misfired and the boat suddenly slowed before lurching forward. I turned around in alarm. It missed another stroke. Small Tome leant down and squeezed the rubber bulb of the fuel pump. He looked up and grinned as we surged again.

“Look, not too much petrol I think!” he said, picking up the orange can and waving it cheerily. The others laughed.

But now, fortunately, the Maoaoa was only a couple of hundred yards away and with Tome draining every last drop we were finally slopping in her wash. As we came alongside Luki reached out and grabbed onto the edge of a porthole. A row of absorbed, black faces peered down over the side.

“What are these idiots up to?” read their collective expression.

Not that I cared much. We were nearly out of petrol and soaked to the skin. The canoe, by this stage, was rocking dangerously as it banged against the side of the larger vessel and I was beginning to feel unignorably queasy.

A man wearing a black cap, an anchor stitched in gold in its centre, joined the crew, leaning down to look at us. He shouted something.

From his expression, I was glad that the wind scooped up his words and ran away with them. Standing up, or rather at a sort of three-quarter squat, I hung onto the side of the ship. Small Tome, sitting by the engine which, relieved by our safe arrival, had sputtered its last, tapped me on the knee.

“Go up on top,” he shouted.

“How?” I shouted back under my armpit.

Just at that moment, by way of an answer, a rope ladder unravelled itself down the side of the boat. Grabbing onto it, I made my way slowly and inelegantly up onto the deck. I smiled as pairs of hands helped me up over the wooden rail. Looking down I got a thumbs-up from Small Tome, who scrambled up the ladder behind me with the petrol container.

“What now yu lookim?” asked the bewildered skipper.

“I just wondered whether you had my chicken feed? Iu gotim kae-kae blong kokorako blong mifala?”

“What kind name blong yu?” He pointed at me with his chin.

“Will, Will Randall from Mendali.”

One of the crew was dispatched into the bowels of the boat to have a look. A few minutes later a sack popped out onto the deck followed promptly by the rest, which were handed from man to man to the gunwale where, by accident, I happened to be standing. Handed the first sack I thought for a moment that I might disappear with it back into the hold. I struggled it to the rail and hung on as it dangled over the side of the boat. It pulled me onto my tiptoes but Luki, below, held his arms up.

“Drop him now!”

He wiggled his fingers expectantly and I let go. He caught it lightly and dropped it down at his feet. Feeling slightly annoyed by this, I discreetly withdrew from the line, feigning the discovery of a drawing pin in the bottom of my shoe. Soon all the bags had been loaded. Looking around for Small Tome who had disappeared, I spotted him at the back of the wheel-house with what was clearly now a full can of petrol. He shook hands with a man, who, dressed in ragged overalls, was smeared in oil that shone lightly against his face.

“Well done, Tome. Where did you get that from?”

“Man here.” He pointed over his shoulder to the stern. “Him wantok blong mi!”

Unerringly, everyone seemed to recognise their own in this tiny country.

We clambered back down the ladder. Tome first and then I made the short but precarious trip down. With one foot on the last rung, I turned to step out into the boat but as I did so my foot slipped and, losing my grip, I fell forward. Accompanied by a great “Ooh!” from the audience I ended up spread-eagled on the sacks of feed. In the process I barked my shin, bruising it badly on the wooden side of our canoe and, as I gripped my leg, I realised there was now a cut in it about three inches long that had split like an over-cooked frankfurter – the sausage not the citizen. The blood ran freely. I did not cry nor did I throw up but I would have very much liked to have done both.

“Thank you tumas. Let’s go, Tome!” I said, waving through a swimming head and gritted teeth.

Back home there was a great deal of clumsy excitement as the sacks were stored in the vestry. I limped to the benches outside my house, nursing a new bash, followed by Young John, the boy who, with his older brother Young George, had been chosen to look after the chickens during their short passage through our hands.

“So when kokorako come?”

He brought out my ‘First Aid for the Traveller’ kit and placed it on the table in front of me. Discarding the information sheet that suggested that if I were to go clubbing I avoided taking Ecstasy and drank a lot of water, I rummaged for a bandage between the clean needles. He asked excitedly again:

“When kokorako come. How many come?”

“Two hundred on Friday.”

Some sticking plaster and a selection of exotic condoms seemed to be the only barrier between me and gangrene. Perhaps I could roll one on as a temporary sock. Tangerine Popsicle or Ribbed Arouser?

“Two hundredfala!” Young John’s eyes shone, particularly when I told them that I would buy him and Young George torches with which to patrol at night.

“Wetem battri?”

“With batteries,” I promised.